I'm reading Beckmann's collected writings. They're quite a lot of fun so far, not that I've got very far, just the early diaries.

They start off very serious and earnest, when he was 19 and reading Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. He'd set out his philosophy of beauty and go on about Minna Tube, who would be his first wife. It's like an extended love letter, one which includes explanations of why he'd have to sleep with other women – because he's an artist who reads Nietzsche basically.

Apparently, in later years, he'd read these diaries aloud to Minna of an evening.

I particularly like the one from Paris in 1904. It can be paraphrased thusly:

18 June 2010

The only religion that makes even the slightest bit of sense is gnosticism. Their idea is that a mad demigod created the world by mistake, and we're all trapped here.

However, if all we had to deal with is the world being deeply and fundamentally fucked, we'd be sweet. But, no, we've also got to deal with all the petty everyday things.

I could, if I were sensible, keep my sock drawer tidy and match each pair. Instead, it is jam-packed with odd socks, most of which have holes. Finding a wearable pair of socks of a morning is a long and arduous task characterised by frustration and annoyance.

If I don't have to get up for anything in particular, which is most days at the moment, I'll lie there until I've mustered the energy and courage to take on the sock drawer. This can take hours.

The benefit of this arrangement is that, no matter what else I am confronted with during the ensuing day, I know the worst is behind me.

16 June 2010

I've got my marks back from school already already. I got an A- for the theory paper, and a B+ for the studio paper. The comment for the latter is well worth quoting in full:

David – the start and end of your semester are intriguingly different points on the spectrum of your project. Without a doubt, it is good to see the video works arrive on the scene as part of your dialogue with(in) both the poetic and the absurd, the black humour of bleakness and (yes) a resolute optimism that is becoming finely balanced in your work. The tree is a great example of how a work presents this ‘double’ bind – and it was a lovely surprise to see it alongside the straight-out hilarity of the other two works. We think this is a good move at this time (and this will come as no surprise).

Your body of work also constitutes the set of drawings that you have been building for the ‘book project’. Of importance here is your willingness to shift sideways – while you determine how to proceed with a ‘print project’. You work consistently and determinedly on these drawings and initially you were focused on one particular outcome for them. This can be done – but is by no means the only option you have to consider for their circulation. My criticism is that, for some time, you were resistant/reluctant to try other possibilities – other means of making work that could be built into the language and idiosyncrasies of a broader project – and indeed, may suddenly reveal new possibilities for making work.

In this way, while the blog is to be considered another lynchpin in your work, it has not necessarily been a vehicle that broadens the terms and references of this project – actually, on these grounds, I think it is patchy, fairly thinly attended to. It is a lens of a sort, but can afford to become more acute, or else find other ways to collect, reflect on and present the information that is informing the project. It would also have been useful to present ‘version 1’ of the A4 drawings at this cusp. David and I are looking forward to how the project develops and in what directions…

Good call on the blog. It has been thinly attended to. I'll have to ramp it up next semester.

14 June 2010

So we handed in the rest of our stuff for school last week. Then we had some drinks. Now we're on a break until mid-July some time. This is good, as it gives me a chance to get stuck into doing some drawings, on which front I've been a bit lax of late.

I'd like to say it's all school's fault, but I can't. It's mostly school's fault.

Anyway, enough of these fripperies, on to something much more important: Doctor Who.

I'm loving this new series, loving it quite a lot. The actor is brilliant, and the stories have been consistently good, except for the Dalek one. How they managed to fuck up such a great concept as Churchill enlisting the Daleks to fight the Nazis is beyond me, but they did.

The episode that played on Sunday was a particular highlight, managing to be both creepy and funny. And the TARDIS covered with ice looked pretty spectacular.

Whacking zombie pensioners with a 4x2, and knocking them off the roof with a lamp? Great stuff. Plus there were some very good lines, especially the one about 'If we have to die, at least we can go out looking like a Peruvian folk trio'.

04 June 2010

It's time to hand in something for the first semester studio paper. I've been wondering for a while what to do. The book is an ongoing project and is far from finished. I could've done a mock-up of how it's looking at the moment and stuck that on a plinth in Massey somewhere, but that didn't seem very satisfactory at all.

So then I thought, since they've been hassling me to do some videos for so long, I'll do some bloody videos. And here they are.